Pages

26 February 2014

And So We Dance

This week is the 2014 AWP Conference
in Seattle. A great big place where scads of poets and prose writers sit in
ballrooms and walk about in quadrilles between tables piled with books and swag.
Between those choreographed experiences, we enjoy chaotic improv sessions in restaurants,
bars, and hallways. If anything could be precisely opposite the drafty garret
or mossy grotto where poets are purported to do most of our work alone, this is it.

In truth, the writer’s work is always a balancing of the
social and the solitary. Too much of either and we run out of time or material.
Just the right balance helps us keep up the flow of inspiration, it gives us momentum
and motivation.

Writers’ events are an opportunity to fill our dance cards
with real readers for whom we write when we return to our keyboards or
notepads. They also present to us in flesh, the real writers who talked and
toiled away to give us the books we admire.

If you’re at the conference, following it in tweets or texts
from friends who are there, or have never even heard of it, hopefully you’ll
have an experience this week that knocks you off your feet
and from which you recover by writing something you would never have thought of
otherwise. It could be art, music, conversation, or a jog down a new lane. Want some inspiration directly from poetry while you walk, jog, or roll? The Poetry Foundation has a fun app that lets you read and listen from your mobile device.